Have you played Hollow Knight yet?

It’s not every day that I find myself completely enthralled by a game… No, who am I kidding, we all know that’s a lie. But, that being said, it’s not often that I lose myself in a game that isn’t story driven or something that I can play with my friends.

But that was before Hollow Knight came into my life and totally just stole all of my time, and I do mean all of it.

I started up Hollow Knight sometime in the last week, I can’t be any more specific than that because real life time seems to escape me now, minutes fade to hours, hours fade to days and days fade into… well, more days and I’m just sitting here, the same place I was sitting yesterday and the day before that, and the day before that, just playing Hollow Knight. I don’t care what anybody says, these 40 hours 37 minutes and 48 seconds were damn well spent, and no mom, I don’t think it’s time I took a break or had a shower.

Hollow Knight is a massively huge and intricate 2D platformer that I originally came across roughly 2 years ago on Kickstarter. Back then it was nothing more than some artwork, but damn was it artwork that called out to me. Later on, and by later on I mean, a year and a half later I found the game again, watched the trailer and less than 5 minutes later I had pre-purchased it.

I can’t put my finger on the one thing that made me want to buy the game or the one reason that I like the game as much as I do, and that’s because there isn’t just one reason. The magic that is Hollow Knight lies in how beautifully familiar yet new everything is. You play as a warrior, fighting to save the world of Hallownest from The Hollow Night, a force of eminence darkness that is breaking loose.

You are also trying to recover your memories about who you are and why you’re being drawn to this world, and in case you didn’t pick it up from the trailer, you, and everyone else in the game, are bugs.

If I had to describe Hollow Knight I would say that it is basically a 2D platform version of DarkSouls.

Just a lot more fun. The world of Hollow Knight is absolutely massive and if you happen to die then you loose all of your Geos (in-game currency) Dark Souls style. The only way to get your hard earned loot back is to journey back to where you died and fight your own ghost to reclaim everything off your body. Also, if you didn’t already gather from my Dark Souls reference, it’s hard. It’s really, really hard. Even though I would say Hollow Knight is a 7/10 on the difficulty scale, it’s not the kind of hard the makes you want to uninstall the game and never play it again, it’s the type of hard that makes you swear really loud, go for a walk to clear your head and then dive straight back in.

It’s got a wide selection of different skills and abilities to help you progress through the game that you unlock by finding and equipping a combination of different Charms to your little adventuring, warrior bug. The game boasts over 130 different types of enemies and took me a good 40 hours to complete (there is an achievement for speed running the game in 6 hours and to that I say HA!) which is insane for a platformer and even more insane if you consider that all of this was created by Team Cherry, a 3 man team that, on their own, animated and created everything, by hand, in a traditional 2D style.

Hollow Knight is available on steam for R159.00 and it’s got to be the most fluid and polished looking platformer I’ve played in a good long while. And yes, it has its small little irritants, like the occasional momentary screen freeze, but it’s nothing that a patch won’t clear up. I definitely suggest you play Hollow Knight, and not just because I don’t want to be the only one around who doesn’t remember when last I took a shower.

You should play it because Hollow Knight deserves to be experienced, Team Cherry deserves to be noticed, and the end of Hollow Knight will change you. For the better. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have more achievements to go get in Hollow Knight… and then shower…

Arielle "Constantine104" Pieterse, is a walking, talking, breathing contradiction to the age old insult that girls can't game. Yes she is pro at playing The Sims, but she is also pro at other games... Or so she's said. She is a co-host of the NAG podcast and also the full-host of a YouTube channel that can be found on the Internet machine.. Her mother is her biggest fan. And her only viewer. She just wants the whole world to let their inner Unicorns free... because no Unicorn deserves to be trapped. Read more articles by: Arielle Pieterse

No Comments

About me

My name is Sam. A South African geek who loves gadgets, technology and Esports. I'm obsessed with South African Esports, own far too many pairs of Converse and secretly wish I could be one of the X-Men. This little blog is a space to find friends who share my geekiness and love for gaming, gadgets and Esports. Welcome!

Facebook page

Follow me on Instagram

I'd love to chat to you some more.

I usually send out a weekly mailer with a recap of blog posts but also some personal anecdotes. If you want to know about competitions or just catch up in a more personal setting then you might like to receive the mailer.